Photos: Best Things Ever Said at the Oscars

Screengrab02.19.2012

"This moment is so much bigger than me," announced Halle Berry upon becoming the first African-American woman to win the Best Actress prize for her role in 2002's Monster's Ball. She then went on to thank everyone from her lawyer (who helped her with a controversial hit-and-run incident) to Sidney Poitier, Oprah, and her family. Sobbing maniacally, she went on and on, all the while reminding everyone how important that moment was. Uh, awkward.

/ Screengrab

"Could you double check the envelope?" joked Martin Scorsese when he finally won a Best Director Oscar for The Departed after being nominated five times previously without winning.Michael Caulfield/WireImage.com.
/ Screengrab

"You commie, homo-loving sons of guns," said Sean Penn when he won Best Actor. "I did not expect this and I want it to be very clear that I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me often." Awww Sean, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to us. To anyone, really.Jason Merritt/Getty Images.
/ Screengrab

"Did I really earn this, or did I just wear you all down?" asked a surprised Sandra Bullock when she won Best Actress for her role in The Blind Side. Our guess, the latter.Michael Caulfield/Getty Images.
/ Screengrab

"This is the only naked man that will ever be in my bedroom," said Melissa Etheridge after winning the award for Best Song for "I Need to Wake Up" from An Inconvenient Truth.Michael Caulfield/WireImage.com.
/ Screengrab

"I'm just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream!" said Hilary Swank after winning Best Actress for her role as transgendered teen Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry. Oh, and she forgot to thank her then-husband Chad Lowe during her acceptance speech.
/ Screengrab

If they gave awards for Best Acceptance Speech at the Oscars, Cuba Gooding, Jr. would surely have won one. The Best Supporting Actor winner jumped, danced and continued to scream thank yous even after the orchestra gave him the cue t o get off the stage. By the end of his speech, Cuba had proclaimed his love for everyone in the room and even set his Oscar down on the floor so he could leap with joy. But at least he didn't forget to thank his wife.
"I know I have a little bit of time so I'm going to rush and say everybody and you can cut away I won't be mad at you," Gooding Jr. said. "Tom [Cruise] said, 'Don't forget to thank your wife,' and I will never forget to thank my wife, my high-school sweetheart and the mother of my children Spencer and Mason, I love you Sarah."
/ Screengrab

There's probably no other actor alive today who can poke fun at himself quite like Robert Downey, Jr. He wasn't up there to accept an Oscar but to present, with Naomi Watts, at last year's ceremony.
"Visual effects: They enable us to see aliens, experience other universes, move in slow motion or watch spiders climbing high above the city landscape. For me, just a typical weeknight in the mid '90s."Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
/ Screengrab

Not one to keep his mouth shut, Michael Moore let President Bush have it when he took to the stage to accept his Oscar for Best Documentary in 2003. "Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up.”
/ Screengrab

Who could forget Roberto Benigni leaping from his chair and jumping joyfully from seat to seat until he got to the stage to accept his Oscar for Life is Beautiful in 1998? "I would like to be Jupiter and kidnap everybody and take them to the firmament and make love to everybody," he said. "I want to kiss everybody because you are the image of joy," and "I feel I want to dive into this ocean of generosity."
/ Screengrab